1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a framework for managing data and synchronization of stored data or inventory, and in particular to a system and method for addressing inquiry or order failures using available resources in a policy-based environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Retail enterprises may include hundreds or even thousands of small and medium retail stores that provide sales, inventory and other services to customers. The retail stores have many computational and display nodes to enables shopping for products or services, looking up prices, inventory accepting orders, etc. The retail stores obtain information on customers, inventory levels of products and latest product prices from the enterprise, and these are done based on policies such as on-demand, periodic or enterprise-driven ways of invoking the sharing of information. Information created at the retail stores (e.g., orders by customers) gets periodically updated by the store to the Enterprise systems.
A retail store may need important information from and Enterprise system, but for a number of reasons may be unable to contact the Enterprise system servers electronically. Such information may include the latest pricing, inventory or other information needed to make a sale. In the current environment, most retail stores have to wait until the communication is reestablished or repaired to the Enterprise system. This could result in the loss of sales, taking orders where products or services are not available due to lack of inventory or staff, and ultimately in customer dissatisfaction.